What it's like to learn to walk again after losing a leg

In January 2010, 22 year old Rishi Vegad was out for an evening stroll in West London when a drunk driver mounted the curb and struck him from behind at 60mph, severing his leg and leaving him with a host of other injuries.

It was a hit and run. Luckily, two policemen on their way to another call noticed a seriously damaged silver Toyota, with blood on the roof, attempting to drive away from the scene. The pair then saw Rishi lying in the road.

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They initially feared the worst but were able to find an artery in Rishi's injured leg and plug it with their hands to stop him bleeding to death. After being rushed to Charing Cross Hospital in an ambulance, Rishi's leg was amputated above the knee and he spent the following week in an induced coma.

"I was just walking with my friend," says Rishi, now 28 and an engineering student. "The driver tried to drive off but police officers drove past and pulled him over immediately. He went to court and served a year in jail."

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Rishi says he can't remember the accident or anything that happened four weeks before it. He was in hospital for nearly two months where he underwent gruelling physiotherapy in order to learn to walk again with a prosthetic leg and knee. An out-patient for nearly a year, he had treatment every day, with the time spent on exercises increasing as he became stronger.

Learning to walk again after a severe injury is a long process. To start with, Rishi had to learn how to sit up in bed unassisted, and then how to get out of it and into a wheelchair. After his prosthetic leg was fitted, he was then taught to stand and walk using parallel bars, and then outside the bars with walking-sticks, until he could complete the exercise with no aids. As well as the NHS recovery programme, Rishi has found comfort and strength in exercise, and is now a keen swimmer and gym-goer.

The accident and the subsequent recovery period was a massive shock, but Rishi has approached the whole process with a positive attitude and says he never experiences stigma.

"I wear shorts all the time. I don't hide the fact I wear a prosthetic leg. People look, obviously they're going to look. But I think it's more in fascination at the impressive bit of kit I've got, as opposed to thinking it's weird."

Even in six short years, Rishi says prosthetic technology has advanced considerably. He's tried three different knees and three different feet in that time. And he's now using an integrated limb system where the knee part and the foot part actually communicate with each other.

The model Rishi's using is called the Linx. It has a network of sensors that act like human nerves, continuously collecting data on the user, activity, environment and terrain. A central computer inside the device acts like the brain and uses all of this information to adapt the limb's response.

While he stresses that even the first artificial limbs he tried never stopped him doing anything he couldn't do before, his latest model, which has just been announced as the winner of the Royal Academy of Engineering's MacRobert Award, has really improved his quality of life.

"For instance, I'm a season ticket holder at Chelsea and I don't have to sit in a disabled seat. I've been able to do that since the second year after the accident. So as the technology has increased, my safety at the stadium has shot up. And now I can go there without worrying 'Will I be able to handle this set of stairs?'".

When asked what advice he'd give to someone learning to walk again using prosthetics, Rishi stresses that life will continue to get better, no matter how scary it may seem at first.

"I initially felt this disconnection from society, and thought 'How am I going to slip back into this?' But it will happen and you just have to push yourself to do it. You have to not be scared to try things. Just try everything. And you'll be surprised how nice people are."

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